Aerial Lift Bridge

"Ryan got the coolest job ever! Where do you think he works?” my friend Boni dared her husband to guess after I called in April 2005 about my new job with the city of Duluth.

“The Aerial Bridge,” Doug responded. Wow, right on the first try.

Yes, for eight years, I supervised operation of the Aerial Lift Bridge. Doug thought the job would be easy, and, let’s be honest, it is a cool job. But it can be stressful work.

Every operator has nightmares: A ship doesn’t call in or the bridge malfunctions as a ship bears down on us. I’ve dreamt only one end of the bridge goes up, leaving me hanging for dear life. I don’t need Freud to tell me these dreams stem from wanting to do everything right, to keep everyone safe.

But the true bridge nightmares don’t involve a ship. People make the job scary. The Aerial Lift Bridge is an exceptionally large piece of industrial equipment serving a basic purpose in the middle of a popular destination for tourists and residents. It’s not fenced off, everyone can walk right up and touch it, even as it goes into use.

Just as with Lake Superior, if you do not give the bridge respect, bad things can happen. You can make a bridge operator’s nightmare a reality.

For eight years, I observed much from my perch above it all. I’d like to share the four worst and five best things I encountered – more good than bad.

First, the worst:

1) Swimmers off the Duluth Ship Canal. It looks calm and inviting there, but currents run at 5 miles per hour (or faster) below the surface. You can get sucked hundreds of yards into the Lake in no time. Yet every summer, I fearfully watch swimmers play there.

2) Bridge-gate runners. Nothing quite makes you catch your breath and shake your head as when a car passes everyone in line to swing around a closed gate, forcing on-coming bridge traffic to stop. We can and will block you on the other side. We will forward your license number and vehicle description to the police. You gain nothing, except to endanger yourself and others. Shame on you.

3) Bridge “hangers-on.” With unfortunate regularity, some people think it would be fun to hold onto the rising bridge. It’s not fun. The bridge moves one foot per second, leaving you too high to drop by the time you realize you should. I can’t fault teens – we’ve all been young and dumb. What chaps my khakis is when a parent lifts a toddler up to hang on. When the scared child does not let go, the parent must play tug of war with the bridge, their child as the rope. It’s terrifying.

4) Travelers who let a long “bridge-up” ruin their day (and mine). We get good at judging the distance and speed of approaching vessels and try to time the bridge to keep within safety protocols while minimizing lift time. Once we commit to rising, though, nothing stops a vessel from slowing to a crawl. I swear some vessels seem to stop completely, as if the captain was deciding whether to thread the ship through the canal needle.

We never ask ships to speed up. We don’t care how long it takes to get through safely. I’m well aware of you waiting, but I’d rather have you mad at me, safe in your car, than to have a multimillion dollar loss of a vessel or a possible loss of life. And flagging me with that “You’re No. 1” salute never caused me to ask a captain to hurry up.

I’m grateful to give these words of warning, but let me give you examples of why Boni was right about the job.

1) The excitement on kids’ faces as they run to see a passing freighter. In spring, local elementary schools take field trips to the Lake Superior Maritime Visitor Center and Great Lakes Aquarium. Our bridge whistle calls them like a pied piper when we’re about to make a lift. It’s great.

2) The view. When he was mayor, Herb Bergson took a ride up. He said I had a better view than he did from the mayor’s office. I’ve been both places, and he’s right. The pilothouse is about 40 feet off the water when the bridge is down. The view stretches from Lester River to 21st Avenue West in Duluth and along Wisconsin’s south shore, including Superior and most of its working harbor.

The sun rising over Lake Superior never gets old, whether a red sunrise on a crystal-clear morning, a hazy sunrise with steam lifting like spirits from the Lake or, my personal favorite, the sun behind a single line of clouds sitting one hand above the horizon.

3) Storms. It’s a thrill to be in the pilothouse with a blizzard roaring outside. (Getting to work is a different story.) The 1991 Halloween storm brought sustained winds of 80 mph, gusting more than 100 mph down the ship canal. We felt the shaking.

4) Blowing the whistle. Once a boy recovering from leukemia chose riding the bridge and blowing the whistle as his Make-a-Wish. It was a career highlight for me. He blew the twin Westinghouse Airbrake train whistles at his leisure. He laughed and laughed when he made schoolgirls jump as they walked underneath the bridge. We actually blew “Shave and a Haircut.” Over the years, I contacted Elliot’s family. He was doing fine – worth a whistle toot or two.

5) The strange stuff. People always ask, “What is the strangest thing you’ve ever seen?” In this regard, we’re like police, fire or emergency-room employees. We see weird stuff so often, it seems normal. Still, “the black bear incident” remains with me.

When my second son was born, I stepped out of the downtown hospital at 6 a.m. to smoke a victory cigar with my mother. (Mom is cool like that.) As we savored the cigars, we spotted a black bear. It pounded the windows at the hospital cafeteria, looked at us and then was chased away by a dog.

You see, we do get bears in the Twin Ports, so perhaps I should have been suspicious that day in the pilothouse when I saw a dog stick its head over the south pier wall (the Park Point side) to look at the water. To my defense, dogs have jumped the wall, not realizing what awaits them. When the “dog” looked over the wall again, I realized it was a bear wanting to cross the canal. Lumbering toward the lighthouse, it stopped several times to peer over the wall.

Ahead of it, I spied a man fishing. The bear was headed for him, blocking the only way off the pier. I had to warn him. I picked up our public address microphone: “Attention to the person fishing on the south pier of the Duluth Ship Canal. Be advised that there is a black bear coming towards you.”

The man turned his head; he heard me. Then he jumped a bit when he spotted the bear. He headed briskly toward the lighthouse. The bear stopped about 100 feet from him and climbed over the wall. As it hung from its forepaws, contemplating the drop into the water, it opted to stay dry. It pulled itself back up in an effortless way that I can only describe as awe-inspiring and retraced its steps.

At the beginning of the pier, Dale Mitchell, another bridge operator, beat a pole on the wall and ground, yelling until the bear fled down Minnesota Point. It climbed a tree. Police told me it later swam across the harbor to the mainland.

Pictures of the bear in the tree and at the pier made their way into Twin Cities’ newspapers. I didn’t see what all the fuss was; as I said, we get bears from time to time. We also get deer, foxes, coyotes and have even had a pine marten living on the bridge (good pigeon hunting).

A few weeks later, a co-worker told me his friend in Minneapolis saw the photos, but was certain they were “Photoshopped” and the story made up. I assure you, it really happened.

I saw it all from the Aerial Lift Bridge, doing my cool job.

Ryan Beamer is a native of Moose Lake, Minnesota, who brought supervisory experience from his Navy service to his job as Aerial Lift Bridge supervisor. He left that job in spring 2013 to pursue the post-baccalaureate nursing program at the College of St. Scholastica.